NAACP still relevant, leader says

BALTIMORE, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- The NAACP is still relevant, even though the United States elected a black man president, the civil rights organization's head said on its 100th anniversary.

The NAACP is not the "National Association for the Advancement of a Colored Person," it is the "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People," Benjamin Jealous said.

At age 36, the group's youngest-ever president told The Washington Post black Americans face a new beginning as the NAACP crosses into its second century 23 days after Barack Obama took the oath of office.

"For many black people in this country, you feel the culmination of a baton of dreams that has been handed in the seemingly endless track race, and we have reached another big milestone in the race," Jealous said.

"But then you go home for the holidays and you gather with relatives at Christmas -- and cousins are locked up, and the men can't find a job, and the women are being paid too little at their jobs, and the kids' schools suck -- and you realize the race is really just beginning."

Keeping the NAACP strong is vital because history suggests black elected officials don't always push civil rights agendas, Jealous said.

"Having experienced the first black mayors and first black governors, we know that if our community doesn't stay organized and make our needs known even more aggressively that we will be disappointed," Jealous told the newspaper.

"We want Obama's legacy to be as great as his campaign, but as somebody once said, 'I believe that we are in the Promised Land, but it ain't no place for sleeping.'"